Capitalism May Be The Real Thing, But It Might Need To Evolve

Even the most ardent supporters of capitalism would have to admit it isn’t a perfect system. Inequality is built into it. In a capitalist system there are naturally going to be winners and losers. Not all winners won fairly, and not all losers lost because they didn’t play well enough.

The clip we chose for this week discusses possible ways capitalism as we know it may end or at least evolve. There are some solid points made in the video. It talks about wealth inequality, a move towards a digital economy, and advances in technology reducing the human labor pool. In the clip they theorize this could spring forth a slightly different type of capitalism. One far different than what we now have. We know not everyone will agree with the assertions found in the clip; we certainly don’t, but we think there are some interesting ideas in it worth sharing. Enjoy.

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Barely a minute in and this video already lost all its credibility… Capitalism is not so rigid as to only offer one path and even if it was, Uber and Airbnb are very much unique capitalist inventioms that only exist because there was an incentive to create them (profit). A capitalist system doesnt require you to create something unique, you just need to serve a market at least as well as your competition.

And capitalism has created a global financial crisis? How is that?

Ah the automation argument, this is my surprised face. When was the first worker replaced by a machine or even animal? A REALLY long time ago, it’s not a new phenomenon and if the argument had any merit we would have massively high unemployment already. The reason we don’t is because entrepreneurs always create new enterprise (like Uber and Airbnb) which always needs people.

Even if the automation argument had any validity, you’re still not understanding how capitalism works. If we were to ever reach a point where automation had taken over most jobs and few people were working then the money saved by automation would be eaten up by lack of consumption. If that were to happen then the whole purpose of automation would be defeated and it would be rolled back to find that balance between the need for people to be employed (and therefore get paid) and the need for business to make maximum profit.

Uber doesn’t own any vehicles no, but that doesn’t mean the vehicles don’t need to be owned, Facebook creates no content but that doesn’t mean content doesn’t need to be created, you get the idea. Cars and houses are still being bought, content is still being created and thus no net loss of capital has occurred. Smoke and mirrors.

The rest of the video just confirms my point. New industries are created and people get employed within those industries, thus capitalism continues to make the world go around.

The only thing that could break the cycle is too much interference from government, something like adopting an insane idea like universal basic income or raising the minimum wage to utterly ridiculous levels. Doing so would lead to a collapse of the middle class and those in power becoming tyrants.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again, there are two kinds of economic systems, colossal failures and capitalism.